How to explain what a blockchain

Dear Steemians

Yesterday during my presentation in KK Bootcamp , I was thrown a question : What is a Blockchain ?

I then remembered that I met this awe dude named Jodi and he explained it to the audience in the most basic manner. I would like to share this with you as well and I hope I got it right. This explanation applies greatly to a Malaysian as we are going to reference to relevant items that we know.

MahJong a 3-4 player game commonly played by mostly the chinese community

In the 50s - 90s , before there were internet or other convenience of the banks today people used these little books to keep track of their most loyal customer and provide them with a credit line.

A Centralized world

So lets take for example that 4 players of MahJong game and played a number of rounds. Player 1 needs to consistently write on their buku 555 whoever won that round, and also who owe's who money.

Once the game ends Player 1 will then inform everyone who is suppose to pays and its distributed according to whats written on the Buku 555. If there is a dispute from Player 3 there is no reference to confirm this.

So what is the fundamentals of a Blockchain.

In this case imagine that ALL PLAYERS has a buku 555 and now records every single game. Once the game ends, now there is a very much less chance of having a dispute as now everyone has a buku 555 which incidentally call it a open ledger

What happens now is that the level of TRUST becomes extremely high as there is way less room for any mistake.

So what is a Blockchain ?

Imagine that it goes beyond just 1 table and it goes to every other table in this room. After each game, every single person in the room writes in the buku 555 / ledger . With this, the trust gained is even higher as everyone in the room now has information of your game

So imagine that all the games end in the room and all the ledgers are then stored in a safe. But the safe is stored side by side with a chain attached to it. Once these safe are closed, there is no way to make any changes. This is what we call it as a Blockchain.

Summary of What is Blockchain ?

The explanation is very simplified and it covers the most basic explanation to the question of What is Blockchain. There is absolutely no point talking about the deep technicals of blockchain as depends on your audience if they want to listen to it.

have a great day aheard